Banana bread

I don't bake. We don't have any of the equipment (stand mixer, beaters, pans) and I don't really enjoy sweets, certainly not enough to justify the calories. Also, I'm not very good. I just can't muster the precision and attention to detail good baking requires. But when friends Kate and Tim crashed here for the night, I figured I could muster a simple quickbread. Or so I thought, until I absentmindedly dumped the sugar in with the flour rather than creaming it with the butter. Once this little mishap was sorted, it actually ended up pretty good.

This is based on the Banana Banana Bread recipe from allrecipes.com, which is apparently a popular standard with 5,000 reviews and 80,000 saves. Wow.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and lightly butter a 9x5 loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, mix 2 c. flour, 1 tsp. baking soda and a pinch of salt. In a medium bowl, mash 5-7 ripe or overripe bananas.

3. In a third largish bowl, cream together 1 stick of butter and 3/4 cup brown sugar (or less if your bananas are superripe). Stir in the mashed bananas and 2 beaten eggs. Shake in whatever appropriate spices you have: in my case, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

4. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture until just moistened. Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 60-70 minutes until a butter knife comes out clean.